Missing Out On Memories

Terminal. And love isn’t. Love is there after, long after. Love is so terrifying to me because it’s gigantic, intense, and everywhere, which makes everything so much more painful.

Every second feels like missing out. Frozen in the moment, trying to freeze time, anxious to make memories last because, very soon, they’ll be all you’re left with. And going through it once, knowing that very soon, we’ll have to go through it again, rips my soul apart.

Life is paper-thin and fragile. Any sudden change could rip it wide-open.

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

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Alone With The Memories

“Parallel: The Two Lines Are Coplanar But Never Intersect”

For the first time in my life, I found myself in a place where nobody knew me. I didn’t have any previous connections to the city. My neighbors, people working in grocery stores, and people at uni were strangers. (I would come to know them with time.) The places were unfamiliar. I didn’t know every street and corner of the city. (I still don’t.)

I left the environment I grew up in. It was the first time I started meeting people who didn’t already know my family, for example. They weren’t involved in my life like that. And that’s fine, bound to happen someday. But when you start losing people who mean so much to you, and nobody in your new life knows them, that’s a bit –

Their presence doesn’t spill into every part of your life. Like, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I have a lot of people in my life now who don’t know my grandparents. When I talk about them, I’m talking about someone who, to my new friends, is a stranger. They are literally people I grew up with, who have so much influence on me and who I love so much, and these people will never get to know them like that.

It also pains me because, in that city where I’m alone, I have to deal with the grief alone. There’s no one to share that with. Not the pain itself but the memory of a loved one. I just don’t get how there could be parts of my life that don’t overlay. I don’t understand it.

It feels like I’m living two completely different lives.

For example, how a day after my grandpa‘s funeral, I had to go back to uni and do lectures and function and just leave catching my breath for later. And if I talk too much, am I annoying people? They don’t even know me. My grandpa means nothing to them. But then again, it’s not like I’ve lost my favorite pen, and now I’m feeling a bit down because of it.

I lost one of my favorite people. My grandpa was the best grandpa I could ask for. But in a city where practically everyone is a stranger, there’s no space in a conversation where I could talk about him. And even though it’s something that I feel spills from my mouth as soon as I open them, I can’t just drop that onto people. They don’t belong to the world that knew him.

And I don’t even want to dump my pain onto someone. When I think of my grandpa, I smile because only beautiful memories come to mind. I want to share that with people. But we cannot exchange memories of him like that, so I smile, then chuckle, then hysterically laugh, and then cry my eyes out all alone in my apartment.

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Losing Memories –

– I was so afraid after his passing that only like two vague memories came to mind. I was in a complete blackout, but I realize now that that was just fear that blinded me. I was scared that, one day, I wouldn’t remember his voice, laughter, or jokes, so I was already panicking about that day. I just lost someone who I thought would always be there. It punched the air out of my lungs. I didn’t want to lose him to my memories, too.

And then when I come back from uni, I talk with my mom and my sister, and we can share the pain and laughter, but that time is so short, and I have to go away again.

And that distance frustrates me, too. I’m missing everything by five minutes. I’m not across the ocean, just far away enough where I pass everything by.

Missing Out –

– I had 20+ years with my grandparents, enough to meet adulthood wrapped in their love. It still doesn’t feel enough because I met them as a child, with my childish, naive, and careless perception and eyes that looked up to them in the context of me.

I was just about to meet them as an adult, with their worries, insecurities, fears, and things that shaped them, in the context of them.

We know people only retrospectively. And now I have questions, those that are heavy on my heart. I don’t know how to find peace with that.

I wish my grandparents had a happier life. Like, what is this? I’m just angry. I hate that this is something I can’t fix.

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